Rolls-Royce: timeline of reputational turbulence

Rolls-Royce's reputation and share price have been through the mill since the
engine explosion on board an Airbus A380 flown by Qantas earlier this month.
Below is a timeline of the key events:

12:45PM GMT 23 Nov 2010

Thurs Nov 4 - A Qantas flight between Singapore and Sydney is forced to turn back and make an emergency landing, after an explosion in one of the Rolls-Royce engines on the Airbus A380.

The force of the blowout damaged the body of the plane and scattered debris across the Indonesian town the super-jumbo was flying over at the time of the incident.

Qantas grounds all its A380s while an investigation by regulatory authorities, the airline, Rolls-Royce and Airbus begins.

Rolls-Royce shares lose 5pc of their value.

Fri Nov 5 - Rolls shares fall almost 5pc for a second day, wiping more than £1bn off the value of the company. Alan Jocye, chief executive of Qantas, says the engine failure was "probably most likely a material failure or some sort of design issue".

A Boeing 747 also using a Rolls engine and flown by Qantas suffers engine trouble and has to return to Singapore, sparking concerns of a wider problem.

Rolls asks all airlines using the Trent 900 engine on their A380s to perform a series of safety checks.

Mon Nov 8 - The slide in Rolls' shares begins to reverse when the company breaks its silence of the previous week to say its engine troubles are confined to the Trent 900, and not across its entire product line.

Qantas says it has found oil leaks which are "beyond normal tolerances" on Trent 900 engines on three separate aircraft.

Fri Nov 12 - Rolls shares rally again, after the company says it has identified the faulty part which caused the engine explosion. Although Rolls declined to identify what sort of component went wrong, the company said it caused an oil leak, which then led to the "release" of a turbine disc, causing the explosion.

The company says it will begin a programme of replacing engine parts or whole engines on all 20 A380s, in service with Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa.

Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls for the last 14 years, says he "regrets the disruption we have caused."

Rolls says the cost of dealing with the engine failure means earnings growth will be slower than forecast in 2010. Airbus says fixing the faulty engine part could lead to delays in A380 deliveries next year.

Mon Nov 15 - Investor confidence in Rolls is on the wane again, with the shares the biggest faller in the FTSE 100. Markets were rattled by reports of another Qantas flight having to return to Sydney. However, that aircraft was a Boeing 747 powered by engines made by General Electric of the US and had no links to Rolls.

Tues Nov 16 - Airbus says Rolls has resorted to taking back engines from Airbus's A380 production line in order to supply replacements as part of the programme to address the engine fault.

Thurs Nov 18 - Airbus warns that it will seek compensation from Rolls-Royce if the fall-out from the Qantas emergency leads to disruption of its A380 production schedule.

Mon Nov 23- Rolls-Royce gets a vote of confidence from Qantas, as the airline says it will resume some of its A380 services as of Saturday.